Summer grilling season is in full swing, which is a perfect opportunity for us to try different food and wine pairings. Wine as a whole goes better with food than any other beverage and with so many varieties to choose from, there are numerous pairing options with grilled food. The naturally occurring sugar, acidity and alcohol in wine to complement almost anything cooked with flames...

... Cabernet Sauvignon to try: Melka CJ Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 2012, California ($65). Indulgent as a velvet smoking jacket, the Melka Cab is packed with ripe plum, black cherry, cassis and mocha with baking spice and tobacco. The silky tannins are soft as a kitten purring for another bite of your steak.

The 2009 CJ is a big, rich wine bursting with dark fruit, smoke, tobacco and licorice. It flows across the palate in a rich, generous style that is immensely appealing. This is huge and delicious. In other words, a quintessential Philippe Melka wine at an approachable price. The 2009 is 94% Cabernet Sauvignon and 6% Petit Verdot from vineyards in Soda Canyon, Pritchard Hill and Yountville. Anticipated maturity: 2012-2017.

I was very impressed with these wines from Philippe and Cherie Melka. The Melkas source fruit from a variety of vineyards in Napa Valley and Knights Valley. The flagship Metisse series represents a blend of French and American cultures.

For cabernet sauvignons, 2007 was a very good year, with a bumper crop of grapes. Now that those wines are hitting the market, we flag eight you'll want to uncork.

Melka Wines CJ Cabernet Sauvignon, $48What you need to know: Philippe Melka is best known as a winemaker to Napa Valley superstars such as Vineyard 29 and Dana Estates. On their own, Melka and his wife, Cherie, produce this big, fruity, and pleasantly tannic wine. It's full-bodied with a pronounced undertone of currants. Melka describes CJ as "the kind of wine I like to drink." We'll toast to that.

A good bargain for Napa is the 2007 CJ, a 1,300 case blend of 82% Cabernet Sauvignon and the rest equal parts Merlot and Petit Verdot. This seductive, hedonistic, dense ruby/purple-colored offering exhibits plenty of black currant, licorice, smoke, and earth characteristics along with an outstanding texture, good plushness and opulence, and a 7-10 years of life ahead of it.

Here is a wine that combines all the best aspects of Napa Valley Cabernets in a rich, complex and balanced package. Its medium-depth aromas and flavors deliver curranty fruit set against a most attractive backdrop of cocoa, caramel, rooty extracts and pencil lead minerality, and it's plush, mouthfilling texture adds further to its impressive personality.

You might also seek out a few second-label wines from producers with good reputations (Napanook from Dominus, CJ from Philippe Melka’s Metisse brand, for instance) which parallel the elegance of their pricier siblings. Of course, the best trick to finding value is to ignore the buzz, the high prices, the promise that expensive cabernet will somehow enhance your lifestyle. Those of us who love wine know that the sweetest rewards lie in discovery, and a good cabernet at a good price is one of the rarest discoveries around.